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There’s smoke stinging his eyes and a bleeding wound on his arm, but all Sean feels is an all-encompassing numbness. The fight left him the night he offered his heart up to Black and was beaten, bleeding and begging, into the ground.
The sound of gunshots gets closer. He closes his eyes, accepting that this is where he meets his end, then suddenly there are hands clutching his sides and a blurred figure in front of him.
The face in his vision swims into focus to reveal Black, frantic and concerned. Idly, Sean wonders if he’s already dead. Only in his dreams would he ever see that look on Black’s face again, rather than one of blank apathy that cuts him to the core.
He’s guided out of the garage with gentle but firm hands and, for a moment, Sean is tempted to break away, to distance himself from the source of his pain, but Black is like a magnet and Sean is just a pile of iron shavings, inevitably drawn to his pull.
Sean barely registers being bundled into a car—since when did Black own a car, he thinks blearily—and then there’s a short drive he drifts in and out of before he’s ushered into a building, up a flight of stairs, and hears the click of a mechanical lock as he’s guided into a hotel room.
Black lowers him down to sit on the edge of the bed with more care than he would expect from someone that left him broken on the ground a few hours ago. Sean doesn’t have the energy to fight him as Black carefully helps him out of his jacket. The rivulet of blood down his arm from where the bullet grazed the skin is warm, unlike the rest of him. It drips onto the dreary carpet as Sean watches it, numb.
Black lifts a hand towards him and Sean is instantly transported back to that bridge, sees a fist flash across his vision, blind rage on Black’s face, and burning, searing pain.
Sean flinches, arms flying up to protect his face from further damage. There’s no movement from in front of him for several seconds. When Sean feels safe enough to lower his arms, Black looks stricken. His eyes roam over Sean’s face, lingering on the swollen skin of his eye socket.
“Who did that to you?”
It’s the soft, unassuming way he asks that makes Sean so angry. It bursts out of him all at once, going from feeling nothing to everything all at once.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Sean’s eyes flash with rage and hurt. “You did this to me, Black!”
All the colour drains from Black’s face. He looks terrified, a caricature of his real self. The wrong wrong wrong feeling that’s been churning in his gut since Black kissed him with his eyes closed, since his confession was met with violent rejection, surges up and overwhelms him. Pieces of a puzzle so far unsolvable begin to fall into place.
The person in front of him isn’t Black. It probably hasn’t been Black for weeks.
This alternate version of Black stares down at Sean’s blood on his hands, face pale, fingers trembling. There’s a smear of it on his left cheek, too.
There is no sign of the cold, uncaring violence from earlier; a barrage of fists raining down as Sean clung to Black’s legs and begged him to stop. Those hands he adored, the ones that held him through his nightmares, reduced to nothing more than a weapon to break Sean into pieces. Right now they are unbearably soft, pressing a hand towel to his arm to staunch the bleeding.
Black is a hurricane; dangerous, unpredictable, tearing through the world and leaving nothing but devastation in his wake. This Black, this Other Black, is nothing like him. Even with the blood smeared across his cheek, this version of Black appears incapable of anything but gentleness towards him.
Sean asks, “Who are you?”
Other Black says, “I need to clean your wounds,” and moves away to fetch the First Aid kit from beneath the bathroom sink.
He moves cautiously, approaching him slowly like one would a wounded animal. His demeanour is open, hesitant, to make him appear as harmless as possible; it’s enough to let Sean drop one layer of his guard and not flinch away again.
Sean keeps a wary eye on Black’s hands as he cleans the wound on his arm with antiseptic. There are no scab marks on his knuckles that match the bruises on Sean’s face. The antiseptic burns, but Sean barely feels it.
Black meticulously applies butterfly strips to close the shallow wound. The tenderness in his actions, like Sean is something precious in need of protecting, makes his throat close up. He doesn’t understand why.
His voice is rough when he says, “You left me. Why did you come back?”
Black doesn’t look at him, concentrating on bandaging the wound. “Isn’t what I’m doing clear enough for you?”
Sean digs his nails into his thighs to stop himself from screaming. It’s his actions right now that make him so confused.
“You’re not him,” Sean says. “You can’t be him.”
Please don’t be him.
Black says nothing, his throat bobbing in a swallow. For the first time since that night, Sean feels a spark of something other than misery in his chest.
“Tell me who you really are.”
The answering silence enrages him. Sean has a right to know if this is truly the person he grew to love, who he opened himself up to and exposed his most vulnerable parts. If there’s a chance the person who rejected him so cruelly isn’t the person he loves, then Sean will claw the truth into the open if it’s the last thing he does.
Sean surges to his feet so fast that Black startles.
“Look at my face,” Sean spits, advancing on him until they’re nose to nose, “look at what you did to me!”
Black’s expression twists in horror as he flinches backwards, tears welling at his lash line as his gaze flits over the damage on Sean’s face. Sean distantly notes the burning behind his own eyes in response.
“I offered you everything,” Sean says, voice hoarse. “I asked you to be with me and stay by my side but instead you punched me, over and over, even after I begged you to stop.”
Black looks like he’s been flayed to the bone, breathing harsh and overwhelmed.
“Sean,” he croaks.
“How could you do this to me, Black?”
Black looks down at the ground, conflicted and guilty. Sean waits, chest aching and daring to hope, but when he receives no response he goes to shove past him. Black catches his uninjured arm.
“It wasn’t me,” Black admits quietly.
Sean goes deathly still. Whatever he says next could remake or break him.
Black’s hand comes up slowly, as if to cup Sean’s cheek, but he stops just before making contact, unsure if the touch would be welcome. “I wasn’t the one who hurt you.”
Sean closes his eyes against the unwavering sincerity in his gaze. This person—not Black, after all—looks like he’d rather cleave himself open than do anything that would cause him pain.
Sean knocks his hand away, ignoring the answering look of hurt and the way his mind screams at him to allow the touch. He says, “If you want me to believe you, you need to tell me who you really are.”
Not-Black sits on the edge of the bed like his strings have been cut. Sean remains standing, though the height advantage does nothing to make him feel better.
“I thought you were beginning to work it out,” Not-Black says. “I wasn’t very good at hiding it.”
Sean takes the opportunity to scan him from head to foot. He’s wearing Black’s clothes, has Black’s tattoos, but his ears look strangely bare.
“You’re not wearing any earrings.”
“He took them away from me,” Not-Black says hollowly.
“He?”
Not-Black hunches over, making himself look smaller. A memory drifts into Sean’s mind, of the contact lenses laying innocently in a backpack. Remembers the drinking game on the rooftop.
You’re shortsighted. You have a sibling.
And Black had taken a drink.
Sean swallows, knows he’s right before he even says, “You’re Black’s brother.”
The moment stretches out endlessly. The nod, when it comes, is expected, but it still hits him like a punch to the sternum.
“How long?”
“Since just before the fire at Tawi’s house.”
Sean’s knees almost buckle. The person who was responsible for all his conflicting feelings, who reached out and cracked his tough exterior open like a clam, exposing his soft insides for his perusal. The person Sean willingly gave himself over to, letting himself fall unfaltering off the top of a building, knowing he would catch him.
All this time it was Black’s brother. His identical twin, by the looks of it.
The muscle in Sean’s jaw tightens.
“What’s your name?”
“White,” he replies hoarsely.
Sean barks a short, bitter laugh. If he were in any other mood, he’d probably make a joke about their parents’ distinct lack of imagination.
“White,” Sean says, nodding as if it makes total sense.
White’s eyelashes flutter. It’s probably been a long time since he heard his real name.
“Did you and Black enjoy yourselves?” Sean asks. He aims for steely but his voice wavers uncontrollably.
For the second time that evening, White’s face looks stricken.
“What? ”
“I hope it was fun,” Sean adds, “stringing me along as some sort of joke. I’m sure it will make a great story for the next family reunion.”
“Sean,” White gasps.
Sean ignores him. His voice is small when he asks, “Was any of it real?”
White’s face crumples, a wretched mixture of pain and guilt. It pains Sean to see him hurting, despite everything. Despite the blood swollen over his socket, the devastating ache in his jaw and heart, put there by somebody who wears the same face.
“All of it was real to me,” White whispers. He sounds as broken open as Sean feels.
A strange combination of relief and betrayal floods his veins. He wonders how it’s possible that White simultaneously feels like a stranger he just met and the person he knows more intimately than anyone in this world.
“I wanted to tell you so many times,” White adds quietly. “That night on the rooftop, when you kissed me for the first time. In the tent, when we—”
“Don’t,” Sean says. And then again, softly pleading. “Don’t, White.”
“Sean,” White says, “nothing we shared was a lie. I can promise you that.”
Misery clogs his throat, making it hard to speak, “I really want to believe you.”
The adrenaline of the shoot-out has worn off and he’s crashing fast. His legs are barely holding him up, his head throbbing from more than just his injuries. White must see the exhaustion on his face because he takes him gently by the elbow and guides him to lie down on the bed.
White settles across from him on his side of the bed—Sean will always think of it as his side of the bed, no matter what happens—and it takes everything within him not to reach out across the space and fold himself into White’s arms. He can’t bring himself to do that, not just yet.
Whatever White sees reflected in Sean’s eyes makes him open his mouth and tell him everything. He talks about the twin connection, about separating from his brother when they were only children and moving to Russia with his father. He tells Sean about returning to Thailand, about Black’s coma, and their childhood friend, Tod, responsible for putting him there. He glances briefly over taking Black’s place in the gang, knowing Sean was there for most of it.
It’s the longest Sean has ever heard him speak in one go. He seems determined to lay it all out on the line, to make Sean understand that he became Black only in name, and not in his actions.
“And then a few days ago,” White explains, “Black woke up. He wasn’t happy to hear that I was pretending to be him, or that I’d gotten involved with you.”
Sean’s stomach twists. The rage he saw in Black’s eyes that night was likely fuelled by a misplaced protective drive toward his brother, but it felt like more than that.
“He told me to leave and never come back,” White says. “He said he’d make me regret it if I ever went back to the garage. But I couldn’t forget about you, no matter how much he threatened me. I didn’t recognise the person Black had become anymore. If I’d have known he would lay a finger on you, I—” he cuts off.
“You’d what?” Sean’s voice is rough.
Sean is used to never being anybody’s first choice. Everybody in his life who means anything to him leaves eventually. His father, his mother, and all his friends after his father’s death. Even Yok, bringing a cop into his sanctuary when he knows Sean can’t afford to trust one. Why should it be any different with White?
Sean would lie across barbed wire if it meant White could safely reach the other side. It would not come as a surprise if that feeling is unreciprocated.
“I would have gone after you both,” White says. “I would have stopped Black from hurting you, no matter what it took.”
Sean lets out a bitter laugh. “You would never stand between me and your brother and choose me. Don’t pretend otherwise.”
White’s eyes flash. “Don’t tell me how I feel. I have a connection with Black that runs deeper than people can understand, but I haven’t seen him in over a decade. He’s chosen a path I’m not sure anybody can follow him down.” White reaches out slowly, pressing his palm against Sean’s sternum. His heart answers the touch by thumping against his ribcage, like it wants to break free to get as close to White as it can. “This thing between us is real. It’s a different kind of connection, but it’s just as strong.” White stares at him and Sean feels like he’s looking directly into his soul, down to the fragile, hidden parts of him. “I know you feel it, too.”
Sean looks away, whole body aching like an exposed nerve.
“How long were you planning to take Black’s place?”
“As long as it took to find out who hurt him” White answers. There’s a loaded pause as he collects his thoughts, gaze softening. “I wasn’t expecting to fall in love with you.”
Sean’s breath seizes in his chest. The first time he heard those words should have been under any other circumstance, and Sean hates Black for taking that away from him.
“Fuck you,” Sean croaks, the honesty of White’s words flooding through his veins in spite of him. “I don’t trust you anymore.”
“I know,” White says, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t love you.”
“I love you too,” Sean tells him, “you fucking asshole.”
White has the audacity to look shocked at the admission.
“Don’t look at me like I’m not allowed to love you back,” Sean snaps, but it lacks any of the previous anger. “I may not have known your name, but I knew you. I still know you—even after all of this.”
“Sean—”
“Shut up. I know what you look like after you’ve been kissed and I know how you sound when you first wake up. I’ve seen you at your happiest and at your lowest—I’ve seen how much Gram and Yok and Gumpa mean to you. I’ve seen the difference you made to all of our lives. You may have pretended to be Black, but it’s you that really belongs there.”
He’s breathing heavily once he’s done. White is staring at him in that awful, terrible, tender way of his.
“Please let me kiss you,” White says.
It’s an easy decision on Sean’s part.
Sean leans in and White meets him halfway, gentle, hesitant, mindful of the split on Sean’s lip. Their lips touch, a petal-soft press, erasing the painful memory of his kiss with Black. Sean flutters his eyes open just to check. White’s eyes, big and beautiful, gaze back at him in a familiar sight.
Sean’s breath shudders out of him in relief.
“There you are,” he says raggedly. “Don’t disappear on me again.”
White presses a kiss to his forehead. Sean gives in to his heart and burrows down into the crook of White’s neck, allowing himself to melt into his hold, listing forward into the safest place he’s ever known. White’s arms wrap around him in a position so familiar it makes his ribs ache.
“I’m going to put your brother back into a fucking coma,” Sean mumbles.
Sean never thought he and Black were friends, but there was a certain level of camaraderie there that he assumed would protect him from Black doing him real harm. Sean cannot comprehend the reason why Black would want to cut him so deeply, even if he wanted to protect White. Whatever has happened to Black in the last few months has warped him until he’s incomprehensible, sending him down a dark path, uncaring of who he hurts on the way.
“I’m sorry,” White says, breaking him from his thoughts. “You didn’t deserve what Black did to you.”
Sean knows that. He knows nobody deserves to be treated the way Black treated him, but it’s one thing to know something and another entirely to hear it affirmed out loud.
“It wasn’t your fault, Sean.” The gentle motion of White’s hand through his hair makes his throat swell. He feels seen and safe. White lied to him for weeks, but he’s never felt more at peace than when he’s in his arms. “Do you hear me?”
“White,” he rasps. It sounds good on his tongue, like something finally falling into place.
“I’m here.”
“White,” he says again, curling further into his hold. He still feels like that broken boy on the ground beside the bridge, watching his love walk away from him. He probably will for a while.
“It’s me,” White says softly. “I’ll stay by your side. I’m not going anywhere.”
Sean closes his eyes, listens to the rhythm of White’s heartbeat, and lets himself believe that.